A Website Hosted on NOSTR?

The Nostr landscape is changing every day. https://npub.pro came across my radar and clearly it cannot work well, basically a website hosted almost entirely on Nostr relays. I was wrong!

I'll be honest that at first, things did not go well. I posted several issues on https://github.com/nostrband/nostrsite and within a very short time the problems were addressed. Right now it is working so much better. While there is always room for improvement, it is incredibly easy to create a website.

I've invited podcaster/blogger friends to give it a try and most now have a working website in such short time.

Quick Start#

• Visit https://npub.pro
• Login
• Select a theme.
• Make some settings adjustments (icon, backdrops, colors, etc)
• Press the Publish button and that's it!

Here's where it gets interesting, there is no cms backend for your posts. Instead, use any Nostr client to create your website post. Here's a small list of popular clients: https://nostr.com/clients.

Tips#

The site previews work best if you already have content on Nostr.

I would start out with all content, no filtering. Once you finalize your theme choice add filters because you may not want all your Nostr posts to be visible on the website. For example if you have a DIY blog, add the #DIY hashtag to all the posts you want to see on the website and set your filter to only show posts tagged #DIY. No-one wants to see your #coffeechain posts on your DIY blog, LOL.

What I Like Most#

• Automagic RSS Feed
• Looks great on mobile devices
• No database, no CMS, no server maintenance
• Plenty of themes
• Beautiful OG/Twitter sharing
• Built in likes, zap and share plugin
• Theme customization for those that know how to
• Ability to add contributors without creating accounts or managing user databases
• Ability to filter Nostr notes via tags or format (long/short notes)
• Use free subdomain or use your own custom domain
• Fully working site comments with zero effort

What I Dislike#

• Not a problem for me but some probably won't like un-moderated site comments
• Not all CSS is manipulable, or example, some CSS is loaded after the custom css like the Zap/share dialogs (perhaps this is a theme specific issue)(also most creators probably won't use custom css/js code)

Website Examples Created By Others Using https://npub.pro#

• Sport news - https://gsc.npub.pro/
• Podcast - https://directordetour.npub.pro/
• Someones personal blog - https://marc26z.npub.pro/
• Custom domain + custom CSS styling - https://news.pivx.org
• My test website with custom CSS - https://palmtree.npub.pro

Conclusion#

I would 100% recommend Npub.pro to anyone who wants a website. It should take the average person under 30 minutes to get a fully functioning website. If your familiar with the admin interface, you could probably spin up a new website in under 5 minutes.